He has published over 100 short stories, including five of his own collections, one of which, Unwritten Histories (Aboriginal Studies Press, 1998) was awarded ACT Book of the Year in 1999. The book provides alternative views of Australian history, incorporating Aboriginal narratives and perspectives, that have often been written out of traditional histories. His other books include, Kurikka's Dreaming (Simon and Schuster, 2000), a creative biography of Matti Kurikka, the Finnish socialist who attempted to establish a utopian colony in far north Queensland in 1900, and Dig: the unwritten history of Burke and Wills (Ginninderra Press, 2002), a humorous retelling of the 19th Century explorers Burke and Wills.

He has also edited several anthologies, including Prison Poets, a collection of poetry from writers in prison, published by PEN, and is editor of Canberra's radical arts magazine Blast.

He is currently completing a creative PhD researching Tasmanian convict lives, focusing on the life of Alexander Pearce, the 'Cannibal Convict of Van Diemen's Land'.

Writer and broadcaster Paul Bailey was born on 16 February 1937. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1953 and worked as an actor between 1956 and 1964. He became a freelance writer in 1967.
He was appointed Literary Fellow at Newcastle and Durham Universities (1972-4), and was awarded a Bicentennial Fellowship in 1976, enabling him to travel to the USA, where he was Visiting Lecturer in English Literature at the North Dakota State University (1977-9). He was awarded the E. M. Forster Award in 1974 and in 1978 he won the George Orwell Prize for his essay 'The Limitations of Despair', first published in The Listener magazine.

Paul Bailey's novels include At The Jerusalem (1967), which is set in an old people's home, and which won a Somerset Maugham Award and an Arts Council Writers' Award; Peter Smart's Confessions (1977) and Gabriel's Lament (1986), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction; and Sugar Cane (1993), a sequel to Gabriel's Lament. Kitty and Virgil (1998) is the story of the relationship between an Englishwoman and an exiled Romanian poet. In his last novel, Uncle Rudolf (2002), the narrator looks back on his colourful life and his rescue as a young boy from a likely death in fascist Romania, by his uncle, a gifted lyric tenor and the novel's eponymous hero.

He has also written plays for radio and television: At Cousin Henry's was broadcast in 1964 and his adaptation of Joe Ackerley's We Think the World of You was televised in 1980. His non-fiction books include a volume of memoir, entitled An Immaculate Mistake: Scenes from Childhood and Beyond (1990), and Three Queer Lives: An Alternative Biography of Naomi Jacob, Fred Barnes and Arthur Marshall (2001), a biography of three gay popular entertainers from the twentieth century.

His latest book, A Dog's Life (2003), is a second volume of memoirs

Frederick Lees was born in 1924. He served in the Royal Air Force during the war and afterwards studied at Liverpool and London Universities. He then joined the Malayan Civil Service and occupied posts ranging from District Officer through State Secretariat Jobs to Emergency work on the Director of Operations Staff. His last post was as Secretary of the Election Commission. He later returned to South East Asia in the British Diplomatic Service and worked in Singapore. In the 1970s he became involved in the work of British and European non-governmental agencies concerned with Third World Development. This for a while took him to Ethiopia and the Sudan. Later he returned to diplomatic work to train the foreign service of Papua New Guinea. The last part of his career in Asia was spent in the Asian Development Bank in Manila. His first novel, Annals of the Purple City, inspired by a sojourn in Macao where he studied Chinese, was published in 1995. In the following year he published a widely praised historical novel The Arthuriad.. He is married and has two sons and now lives in the United Kingdom.

Ken Wiwa is the son of the executed writer Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged, along with 8 fellow activists, in November 1995 after being found guilty of complicity in the murder of four pro-government Ogoni chiefs. The trial of the nine was roundly criticized for being unjust, and the executions were condemned by world leaders and human rights organisations.

Mr Wiwa has been harshly critical of the multinational oil company Shell's role in his father's execution. It was Ken Saro-Wiwa's campaign against Shell's oil pollution in the region which first pitted him against the Nigerian government and which eventually sent him to the gallows.

Ken Wiwa is a journalist who contributes regularly to newspapers throughout Europe, North America, and Africa. He currently lives in Canada with his family, where he writes for the Toronto Globe and Mail and is senior resident writer at Massey College at the University of Toronto. He travels to Nigeria several times a year to work on the Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation, for Ogoni children, and maintain his father's gravesite. Regarding his book, In the Shadow of a Saint, we read: "Riveting, searingly honest, and deeply moving. It is a splendid monument to an outstanding man." -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Christian Kracht (b,1966 in Switzerland) is one of the most promising young novelists in Germany. Drawing comparisons with Bret Easton Ellis, Michel Houellebecq and Douglas Coupland, Christian Kracht has published a number of novels, collections of short storys, essays and anthologies. He lives and writes in Bangkok, Thailand, works as journalist and screenwriter, and is currently editor and publisher of Der Freund (www.derfreund.com), a bi-lingual (german & english) literary magazine, which will be published in Germany from august 2004 and have its editorial offices in Kathmandu, Nepal. His work is currently translated into 12 languages.

Christian Kracht has been called the prime stylist of the pop - otherwise now nicknamed the VW Golf - generation. His cool style has led to comparisons with Evelyn Waugh, and here he adorns his tale not merely without pointing a moral but by deliberately assuming a cloak of feigned ignorance. He is content to leave the reader, through vividly described scenes, to observe the drift of a man bereft of intellectual resources towards an unprotesting acceptance of inhuman totalitarianism.

Michael Vatikiotis, has worked as a writer and journalist in Southeast Asia for the past twenty years, first as a student living in Thailand, then as a journalist in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. He now lives in Hong Kong, where he is Chief Correspondent and editor at large for the prestigious weekly Far Eastern Economic Review.

Vatikiotis was born in the U.S. of Greek and Italian parents with a Middle Eastern background. He was educated at London and Oxford University, with short stints at Chiang Mai University in Thailand and the American University of Cairo. As a correspondent, he was posted in Jakarta for five years and continues to write and comment on contemporary Indonesian affairs for a wide variety of journals and periodicals.

His works include Indonesian Politics Under Suharto: Order, Development and Pressure for Change, Indonesian Politics Under Suharto, Political Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree, The International Politics of Asia-Pacific, 1945-1995, and Debatable land : a collection of short stories from South East Asia, and a novel, The Spice Garden, in which he explores the behaviour and innermost feelings of people caught in vicious religious conflict on a small island in Indonesia's eastern province of Maluku. On an isolated speck once well-known for its fragrant spice, Christian and Muslim neighbours fall on each other.

Fintan O'Toole is one of Ireland's leading political and cultural commentators. Born in Dublin in 1958, he has been drama critic of In Dublin magazine, The Sunday Tribune, the New York Daily News, and The Irish Times and Literary Adviser to the Abbey Theatre. He edited Magill magazine and since 1988, has been a columnist with the Irish Times. His work has appeared in many international newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Granta, The Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Awards include the AT Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism (1993), the Justice Award of the Incorporated Law Society (1994) and the Millennium Social Inclusion Award (2000). He has also broadcast extensively in Ireland the UK, including a period as presenter of BBC's The Late Show. Books include After the Ball (2003); Shakespeare is Hard but so is Life (2002); The Irish Times Book of the Century (1999); A Traitor's Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1997); The Lie of the Land: Selected Essays (1997); The Ex-Isle of Erin (1996); Black Hole, Green Card (1994); Meanwhile Back at the Ranch (1995); A Mass for Jesse James (1990) and The Politics of Magic (1987).

Amit Chaudhuri (keynote speaker) was born in Calcutta, India, in 1962, and brought up in Bombay. He graduated from University College, London with a First Class Honours, and completed hius doctorate on critical theory and the poetry of DH Lawrence at Balliol College, Oxford. He was later Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Leverhulme Special Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

His criticism and fiction have appeared regularly in most of the major journals in the world, including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Observer, the Spectator, Granta, the New Republic, and the New Yorker. A short film was made about him by the BBC for their 'India Week' on the Late Show. He was one of the London Observer's Twenty One writers for the Millennium.

He has written four novels. His first book, A Strange and Sublime Address (1991), won the first prize in the Society of Authors Betty Trask Award for a first novel, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best First Book). His second novel, Afternoon Raag (1993), won both the Southern Arts Literature Prize and the Encore Award (for best second novel of the year). The novel adopts the metaphor of Indian classical music, the raag, to evoke the complex emotions displayed by the narrator, a young Indian student at Oxford. It was followed by Freedom Song (1998), set in Calcutta during the winter of 1992-3 against a backdrop of growing political tension between Hindus and Muslims. The US edition of Freedom Song won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Fiction) in 2000. A New World (2000) is the story of Jayojit Chatterjee, a divorced writer living in America, and the visit he makes with his son Vikram to his elderly parents' home in Calcutta. His latest book, Real Time (2002), includes a number of short stories set in Bombay and Calcutta, some of which have been published in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New Yorker, as well as 'E-minor', a memoir written in verse. D. H. Lawrence and "Difference": The Poetry of the Present, a study, with an introduction by the renowned Irish poet-critic, Tom Paulin, exploring Lawrence's position as a "foreigner" in the English canon, was out in 2003. He is editor of The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature, published in 2001.

Amit Chaudhuri is also a trained and critically acclaimed singer in the North Indian classical tradition; he has received high praise for his singing from various newspapers and journals.

Professor Jasodhara Bagchi, M.A.(Oxford), Ph.D.(Cambridge) was Professor of English at the Department of English in Jadavpur University in Calcutta for many years. (Jadavpur University's Department of English is the only Centre of Advanced
Studies for English in India sanctioned by the University Grants Commission of India). She was also the Director of the School for Women Studies at Jadavpur. At present she is the Chairperson of the West Bengal Commission for Women. She is the author or editor of numerous books in English studies and women studies.

Ayu Utami's work is something new in Indonesian - dry and thirsty - literature. but ever so stunningly, in Indonesia. Her writing is about as edgy as a box, as unexpected as a car crash, yet still as persistent as the ticking of a clock. She writes about such matters as sex and the contacts between religions in her novel and essays in an uncommon way for Indonesia. Her tolerance and openness offer a balance to conservative streams. She makes a difference in the present period of Indonesian history. The following excerpt from ASIAWEEK is telling.

When her 137-page story entitled "Saman," part of an uncompleted novel, won the country's prestigious Chairil Anwar Award for literature. The prose, in Bahasa, impressed judges, who swooned over its powerful style. But when the fashion model-turned-journalist's name was announced as the author, the literary set snickered in disbelief. She seemed too young, she looked too good, she had never written anything of note before. Some believe the work really belongs to her mentor and friend, Gunawan Mohamad, former editor of Tempo, a magazine the government shut down. "I am under no obligation to respond to these accusations," Ayu, 29, said. "The doubts come because I am a woman and because young talent is scorned. [My critics] think I have to get everything from men. As if I can't do anything on my own."

Kyoji Kobayashi (b,1957) is one of the most promising young novelists in Japan. He has published not only more than half a dozen novels and collections of short stories so far, but is famous as a master Haiku-poet. English translationed of his works are included in Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction edited by Alfred Birnbaum and New Japanese Voices: The Best Contemporary Fiction From Japan edited by Helen Mitsios.

The following is a review of 'Mazelife' by Kyoji Kobayashi, from Monkey Brain Sushi. A story about K. K's intense fear of emotion fuels his drive to detach himself from all that is human and create a new existence for himself. After failing to convert himself into a robot, K decides to create a God to not only worship but also act as his slave and serve his interests.

Born in 1942 in Taiping, Perak, Prof Dr Muhammad Hj Salleh was a student at High School Bukit Mertajam, the Malay College Kuala Kangsar and subsequently at the Malayan Teacher's Training College, Brinsford Lodge, England. He read for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Malaya (Singapore) followed by a Masters, and Ph D at University of Michigan in the United States of America in 1973.

Muhammad Hj Salleh is the author of several volumes of prose and poetry and was the Deputy Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Malaysian National University and Head of the Institute for Malay Language and Letters.

In 1977 he was visiting professor under the Fulbright-Hays programme and taught at the North Carolina State University. He was awarded the title of National Laureate for Literature in 1991.

Cecil Rajendra's poems turn up in the most odd places: at a church-sponsored conference on the evils of tourism, in a Black South African liberation movement's newsletter, in a mass-circulation Japanese daily paper, in a Filipino law professor's human rights lectures, in a geography textbook for British schoolchildren, in a Bengali magazine, in a book about militarism, in a Time magazine cover story, in a Penang taxi driver's glove compartment -- but seldom in literary journals.

"My poems tend to be more a part of Third World studies than literature studies," Rajendra says. "They find themselves in all sorts of places, and I am most pleased about it."

He is genuinely not interested in literary acclaim, nor abuse, though he has received plenty of both. Rajendra judges his work strictly in terms of its effectiveness in awakening people to the burning social issues that afflict Malaysia and the Third World generally -- oppression, injustice and exploitation, corruption and greed, want, hunger and poverty, ecological ruin.

His poetry is part of a total commitment. A lawyer by profession, he handles mainly pro bono cases where a principle of justice is involved, defending factory workers who find themselves on the wrong side of the country's highly oppressive labour laws, taking drugs cases involving youths from fishing villages shattered by ill-considered tourism projects, representing peasants denied justice because once in the witness box or dock they are struck dumb by the augustness of the proceedings, the belittling effect of the legal stage props, the theatrical pomposity of the official fancy dress.

(The above is an extract of an article by Keith Addison which appeared in the South China Morning Post and The Bangkok Post).

His poems have been published and used by the WWF, UNESCO, OXFAM, UNICEF, WCC, BBC, UNDP, the National Geographic and Amnesty International. His poems have been broadcasted in German, Japanese, Chinese, Bengali, French, Malay, Tamil, Urdu, Danish and Tagalog.

His published volumes include Rags a& Ragas (2000), Shrapnel, Silence & Sand (1999), Broken Buds (1994), Papa Moose's Nursery Rhymes (1991), Love Lunatics and Lalang (1989), Dove on Fire (1987) and Hour of Assasins (1983). He will be launching his latest collection at the Citigroup Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival 2004.

Salleh ben Joned has been described as a literary street fighter. And when his first collection Poems Sacred and Profane was published in 1987. Muhammad Hj Salleh said '... the appearance of Salleh's book ... was (sic) the most traumatic experience for the Malay literary scene.'

Born in 1941, Salleh ben Joned was a Colombo Plan scholar sent to Australia to study English and ended up spening 10 years there. He became a student of the late James McAuley, one of Australia's major poets, at the University of Tasmania. After his BA (Hons) he got a scholarship to do a Masters which was converted to a PhD registration but he never completed it.

He came back to Malaysia in 1973 and joined the English Department of the University of Malaya which he quit in 1983 to become a freelance writer. Sajak Sajak Saleh/Poems Sacred and Profane was published in 1987 and As I Please, a collection of prose writing, in 1994. His second collection of prose pieces Nothing is Sacred was published in 2003. He will launch his new collection of Poems called Adam's Dream during the Citigroup Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival 2004.

Lloyd Fernando lived through the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore as a building labourer, trishaw rider and apprentice mechanic, before he went back to school. To pay his way through University he worked as a private tutor and a part time radio broadcasting assistant and newsreader.

He earned double honours degree in Philosophy and English at the University of Malaya (in Singapore) and a Ph D from the University of Leeds. He was the Professor of English at the University of Malaya from 1967 to 1978, when he chose to retire. He than read law at the City University, London and was admitted as Barrister of Middle Temple and as an Advocate and Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya.

His works include: Novels: Scorpion Orchid (1976) and Green is the Colour (1993). Criticism: 'New Women' in Late Victorian Fiction (1976), Cultures in Conflict (1986). Edited Anthologies: Twenty-Two Malaysian Stories (1968), Modern Malaysia Stories (1982), New Drama One (1972), New Drama Two (1972)

He is married and has two grown-up daughters.

Kee Thuan Chye is an actor, playwright, stage director, literary activist-promoter and journalist. His acting credits include speaking roles in the films "Entrapment" and "Anna and the King". On TV, he was a regular on "City of the Rich". He has also appeared in guest roles in the sitcoms "Kopitiam" and "Phua Chu Kang". On stage, he has acted in countless productions including Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman".

As a playwright, he is best known for the plays "1984 Here and Now" and "We Could **** You, Mr Birch". "1984 Here and Now" is included in a new international anthology called "Postcolonial Plays", published in the UK by Routledge. He has also directed about a dozen plays for the theatre. He is the author of "Just In So Many Words" and "Old Doctors Never Fade Away". His poems have been published in numerous anthologies and journals at home and abroad. He has been a judge and regional chairperson of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Extracts from his novel in progress "A Sense of Home" are included in the anthologies "New Writing 10", published in the UK by Picador, and "The Merlion and the Hibiscus", published by Penguin India.

Rehman RASHID ( b. 1955, Perak) is the author of Malaysia Journey, a best selling book that presents reflections on Malaysian society since independence, and on the relations among
Malaysia's three major ethnic groups. He also wrote Pangkor: Treasure of the Straits.

As a journalist, Mr. Rashid served as senior writer for Bermuda Business (Bermuda) and Asiaweek (Hong Kong). He is the Associate Editor and leader writer for the Straits Times. He holds a bachelor of science in marine biology from the University of Swansea (Wales).

Karim Raslan is a forty year-old Cambridge University-educated lawyer and author.

Karim is also the author of Ceritalah: Malaysia in Transition which was described by Nobel Laureate, Sir V.S. Naipaul as 'educated and elegant', Heroes and Other Stories and Journeys Through Southeast Asia: Ceritalah 2.

His weekly syndicated column Writers Journal is published by The Business Times (Singapore), The Star (Malaysia), Sin Chew Jit Poh (Malaysia). It is also published on an ad-hoc basis in The Jakarta Post, The Nation (Bangkok), Philippine Daily Inquirer, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Ming Pao (Hong Kong) and Sydney Morning Herald. Over one and a half million people across the Asia-Pacific read his column every week.

He is on the International Council of the Asia Society, New York. He has spoken at and lectured to countless high-level conferences (including the recent World Economic Forum in New York, the annual retreat of the Pacific Center for International Policy at University of Southern California and the International General Meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council) and leading academic institutions (including Stanford University, Georgetown University, Princeton University, National University of Singapore, University of Michigan and SAIS, Chulalongkhorn University, John Hopkins University, Australian National University, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, University of Malaya).

He has been quoted extensively in the international media - including Le Monde, Les Echos, NRC Handelsblatt, The Straits Times, The Financial Times, TIME, NEWSWEEK, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Australian and The Boston Globe.

He also contributes opinion pieces on Asia-Pacific and Islamic Affairs for both regional and international newspapers, magazines (Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, The International Herald Tribune, Philippines Daily Inquirer), TV (CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN) and radio (NPR).

He has been a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York from November 2001 until February 2002. He has been working on a project entitled “ Freedom of Expression in Islamic Societies”.

Karim divides his time between homes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Ubud, Bali in Indonesia.

Amir Muhammad was born in 1972. He has a Law degree from University of East Anglia, UK which he does not use. He attended two summer courses in film-making at New York University and also worked as script-editor for Malaysian television. He has been a writer for the Malaysian media since the age of 14 and still contributes actively to the print and online media. He also edited the book "Silverfish New Writing 1" (2001).

His first movie, the ensemble comedy "Lips to Lips" (2000) was the first feature made in Malaysia using digital-video (dv) technology. He also wrote and directed the personal video-essay collection on aspects of Malaysian identity, "6horts" (2002), two of which won awards at the Singapore International Film Festival.

His 2003 docu-drama "The Big Durian" was selected to over 15 film festivals around the world including Sundance. He is currently based in Indonesia doing a documentary around the epic feature film "Gie" (2005).

He will be talking about his latest project, the experimental romance "Tokyo Magic Hour", which he made as part of an Asian Public Intellectuals grant from The Nippon Foundation. It will premier during the Citigroup Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival.

DR. FARISH A. NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist. He has taught at the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya and the Institute for Islamic Studies, Frie University of Berlin. He is currently associate fellow at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Malaysia. He is the Secretary General of the International Movemant for a Just World and has studied the phenomenom of Islamist political movements in South East Asia.

He is the author of several books including New Voices of Islam (Leiden: ISIM, 2002), The Other Malaysia: Writings on Malaysia's Subaltern Histories (Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish, 2002), and Islam Embedded: The Historical Development of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, 1951-2003 (Kuala Lumpur: MSRI, 2003).

Wong Phui Nam first produced a collection of poems, Toccata on Ochre Sheaves in 1958. Most of his poems he wrote after this appeared in Bunga Emas in 1963. His first comprehensive collection, How the Hills are Distant came out in 1968. His poems have also appeared in journals and anthologies such as Malaysia Literature in English (1996), Tenggara (1968), The Flowering Tree (1970), Seven Poets (1973), An Anthology of Malaysian Poetry (1988), SKOOB Pacifica Anthology No. 1: Southeast Asia Writes Back! (1993) And SKOOB Pacifica Anthology No. 2 : The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword (1994). His later collections are: Remembering Grandma and other Rumours (1989), Ways of Exile (1993) and Against the Wilderness (2000)

Jan Kemp (1949- ), is a poet, short story writer and accomplished public performer of her work, whose career has been mostly expatriate.

Born in Hamilton and graduating in English from the University of Auckland in 1974, she has since lived in Canada, the Pacific region, Hong Kong, Singapore and Germany, writing and publishing poetry and teaching English as a second language. After living overseas for most of the last twenty-five years, Jan Kemp has returned to New Zealand.

She was first published by Arthur Baysting in The Young New Zealand Poets (1973). Her volumes include Against the Softness of Woman (1976), Diamonds and Gravel (1979), The Other Hemisphere (1991) and two pamphlets, Ice-breaker Poems (1980) and Five Poems (1988). Her latest work is Only One Angel (2002). This collection of 32 new poems moves around the theme of a personal journey towards an intimate relationship.

Known more recently for her prose readings, she has published a number of short stories in journals and anthologies. She was awarded a PEN-Stout Fellowship at Victoria University in 1991.

Born on 18th July 1977, Alfian bin Sa'at was educated in Tampines Primary School, Raffles Institution, Raffles Junior College and the National University of Singapore.He was the Chairman of Raffles Players Drama Society in RI and RJC, where he received the Kripalani Award for Outstanding Contribution to Creative Arts.

His plays include Fighting (1994), performed by The Necessary Stage Theatre for Youth Ensemble, Yesterday My Classmate Died (1997), performed by The Creative Arts Alumni, and Black Boards, White Walls (1997) performed by The Necessary Stage. Alfian has also written Malay plays which were all performed by Teater Ekamatra: Dongeng (Myth, 1997), Deklamasi Malas (Declamation of Indolence, 1997), Causeway (1998), Madu II (Polygamy, 1998) and Anak Bulan di Kampung Wak' Hassan (The New Moon at Kampung Wak' Hassan, 1998). He published a volume of poems, One Fierce Hour, which was voted by Life! as one of the top ten books 1998. In the same year, he received the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award for his collection of short stories: Corridor and Other Stories. His more recent works include History of Amnesia, a collection of poems, published in 2002. His poems have been published in the RJC publication Tributaries and local indie rock magazine, BigO.

Yong Shu Hoong was born in 1966 in Singapore. In 1990, he graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Computer Science degree.

From 1992 to 1993, he studied at the graduate business school of Texas A&M University at College Station. It was during these one and a half years spent in America that he wrote most of the poems which later became Pangs of Hunger, an anthology shortlisted for the 1995 Singapore Literature Prize.

He currently works in Singapore as a journalist. His writings have appeared in publications like BigO, The New Paper, The Straits Times and on Web sites like Orientation.

Isaac is his first book, featuring poems written between 1992 and 1997, including several taken from the never-published Pangs of Hunger. The book was nominated for National Book Development Council of Singapore's Book Award. One of the poems, "The Sobering Age," was chosen by the 1999 Poems On The Move program to be displayed on Mass Rapid Transit trains, and at bus stops and public housing estates.

Felix Cheong was the recipient of the National Arts Council's Young Artist of the Year for Literature Award in 2000. His three books of poetry are Temptation and Other Poems (1998), I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999) and Broken by the Rain (2003).

His work has also been published in newspapers, poetry websites, foreign journals and 6 anthologies of Singaporean poetry. Felix has been invited to perform his work at the Brisbane Writers' Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, the Hong Kong Literary Festival, the Singapore Writers' Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

As a literary activist, he has been involved in promoting Singaporean literature abroad. He was instrumental in organising a Singapore contingent of writers on 4 successful reading tours -- The Philippines (January 2001), Australia (July 2001), the US (April 2002) and the UK (August 2003).

Felix graduated from the National University of Singapore with a BA (Hons) in 1990 and completed his Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland in 2002.

Alvin Pang (b. 1972) holds First Class Honours in Literature from the University of York in England and an Honorary Fellowship in Writing from the University of Iowa's International Writing Program (2002). His first volume Testing the Silence (Ethos Books, 1997) was listed as one of Top Ten Books of 1997 by The Straits Times and was nominated for the National Book Development Council for the Book Awards in 1998/9. City of Rain (Ethos Books, 2003) is his second volume of poetry.

He is the co-editor of the seminal volume, No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry (2000), one of the Straits Times' Top Ten reads of 2000 and a key text on university syllabuses. In 2001, he was one of a quartet of bilateral editors who developed a joint anthology of Singapore-Filipino love poetry, released as Love Gathers All: A Philippines-Singapore Anthology of Love Poetry (Ethos Books / Anvil Press, 2002). Pang was the featured poet of the Spring 2002 issue of the Atlanta Review (USA), a journal which counts Nobel Prize laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott among its contributors. His work has been featured in journals such as the English Review (UK), Paper Tiger (Australia), Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Rhthyms: The Millennium Anthology of Singapore Poetry, for which he was also the English Language Poetry Editor. He is also the Country Editor (Singapore) for the forthcoming Penguin Book of Southeast Asian Verse.

A recipient of several Singapore International Foundation and National Arts Council grants, Pang frequently assists the National Arts Council in literary projects. He served on the organizing committees of the Singapore Writer's Festivals in 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003.

A former teacher, civil servant, journalist, columnist and online producer, Pang is also the founder and editor of online poetry anthology, The Poetry Billboard, the Literary Singapore news website and mailing list. His articles, essays and commentaries also appear on http://www.verbosity.net.

Pang has made international appearances in support of Singaporean writing. He led a delegation of Singapore writers to Australia in July 2001, another to the Austin International Poetry Festival in April 2002, and will attend the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2003 as an invited international writer.

Terence Heng. Having studied everything from AutoCAD to Chinese Sociology to Postcolonial
Literature, Terence Heng graduated from the University of Nottingham with a BSc (Hons) in Economics. He then spent stints at various advertising firms before joining the Centre for Culture and Communication at Republic Polytechnic as a lecturer.

Terence has published one collection of poetry and photography, Live a Manic Existence with a Cup of Sanity in Your Hand in 1997 and is about to release his second book, From Where I'm Standing. He has also been featured in several Singaporean poetry anthologies, notably No Other City by Ethos Books (2000) and From Boys to Men by Landmark Books (2003). Terence is currently about to begin his postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford.

Eddie Tay is the author of Remnants (Ethos, 2001) a poetry collection consisting of renditions of the mythic and colonial history of Singapore as well as poetry from the Tang dynasty. He was a research scholar at the University of Singapore and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Hong Kong. His poems and essays have been published in journals and anthologies such as Singa: Literature in Singapore, Love Gathers All : The Philippines-Singapore Anthology of Love Poetry and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. He has recently assisted in soliciting and collating submissions to Yuan Yuan, an international literary journal published by the English Department (HKU) and was a poet-teacher for Moving Poetry, a project that teaches creative writing to primary and secondary school students in Hong Kong.

Toh Hsien Min (or Hsien Min Toh in Western name order) has published two collections of poetry, Iambus (Singapore, 1994) and The Enclosure of Love (Singapore, 2001). His work has also been published internationally in journals such as Atlanta Review, London Magazine, Oxford Poetry, 91st Meridian, Poetry Ireland Review and Yuan Yang, as well as anthologies such as the Oxford-Cambridge May Anthologies, Island City, No Other City, Love Gathers All and Zouk: the Book.

He has been invited to international literary festivals such as the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Austin International Poetry Festival and the Queensland Poetry Festival, and has also taken an active part in the Singapore Writers' Festival since its 1993 Writers' Week incarnation.

Hsien Min is the founding editor of the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (www.qlrs.com), the leading literary journal in Singapore, a founding member of The Literary Centre (Singapore) and an organiser for Singapore's first international poetry festival, Wordfeast. He has also been a recipient of the Shell-National Arts Council Scholarship for the Arts. Hsien Min read English at Keble College, Oxford, where he was also President of the Oxford University Poetry Society.

He currently works with a group of property and services companies.

Gui Wei Hsin is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Literatures and Cultures in English at Brown University, USA. His research interests include postcolonial theory and literatures, theories and literatures of diaspora, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism, as well as city literature. Wei Hsin has published a paper on negotiations of Chineseness in Singaporean poetry in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), as well as an introductory essay on hybridity in the lyrics of Liang Wern Fook in the Singaporean songwriter's latest book. He has also given talks on Singaporean poetry at various academic conferences in the US. His poetry has appeared in the Connecticut River Review, No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry, Love Gathers All: The Philippines-Singapore Anthology of Love Poetry, and The 2nd Rule.

Kirpal Singh (B.A. Hons (English), University of Singapore 1973, M.A. (Technology & the Modern Novel), University of Singapore, 1976, Ph.D. (Dichotomy & Synthesis: Aldous Huxley's Search for Integration), University of
Adelaide, 1980) is currently an Associate Professor of English Literature, School of Economics and Social Sciences, Singapore Management University. Before that he was Associate Professor, Nanyang Technological University, 1994 - 2000, Senior Lecturer/Head of Department, Nanyang Technological University, 1991-1993, Senior Lecturer, National University of Singapore, 1975-1991, Lecturer, National University of Singapore, 1980-1984, Instructor, National University of Singapore, 1978-1980, Colombo Plan Scholar/Part-time Lecturer, University of Adelaide & South Australian Institute of Technology, 1976-1978, and Research Scholar/Lecturer, University of Singapore, 1973-1976.

Kirpal Singh has authored and edited over 14 books, latest being CATWALKING & THE GAMES WE PLAY (poems) and INTERLOGUE: STUDIES IN SINGAPORE LITERATURE - Series of 10 volumes dealing with Singaporean literature (ed).
Recently launched a book on Creativity entitled THINKING HATS & COLOURED TURBANS.

He has also published over 40 articles in prestigious/learned Journals all over the world - including WESTERLY, SOUTHERN REVIEW, KUNAPIPI, WORLD LITERATURE WRITTEN IN ENGLISH, QUADRANT, DIOGENE, LITERARY CRITERION, ARIEL, COMMONWEALTH NOVEL IN ENGLISH

Christine Suchen Lim is a third-generation descendant of illiterate Chinese immigrants in Malaysia. She grew up on both sides of the causeway which separates the island of Singapore from Malaysia, before moving with her family to Singapore when she was 15. She graduated from the National University of Singapore and taught in a college for some years before writing fiction.

Lim published her first novel in 1984. Entitled Rice Bowl, it questions the regulated and pragmatic politics of Singapore in the sixties. In 1986, she co-authored a short play, "The Amah: a Portrait in Black and White", which earned her the Merit Prize in the National University of Singapore- SHELL Short Play Competition. Her second novel, Gift from the Gods, appeared in 1990. She became the first Singapore writer and the first woman to win the Singapore Literature Prize for her third novel, Fistful of Colours in 1992. While studying for her post-graduate diploma in applied linguistics, she co-edited a literature series for secondary schools. She attended the University of Iowa International Writing Program in 1996 on a Fulbright grant through the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, where she returned as the writer-in-residence in spring 2000.

Lim is presently a curriculum specialist in the Singapore Ministry of Education, but has continued to write fiction along with teaching materials. She believes that "the novelist must be willing to live through the loneliness of the long distance runner if she cares about both form and substance", and that "writing a novel part time while holding down a full time job and looking after a family makes it doubly difficult for many women writers." However, she is "not happy just with telling a story", but is "concerned about how the tale is told and in whose voice." Indeed, she has continued to experiment with different narrative voices from her earliest works, to her fourth novel, Bit of Earth. Published in 2000, this latest novel subverts colonial stereotypes and shows the friendship between a Malay chief and a Chinese refugee who questioned British colonial practices.